infoTECH News

[June 30, 2014]

Increasingly Sophisticated Malware and Lack of Threat Intelligence are Key Factors in Growing Number of Successful Attacks: Check Point Survey

(ENP Newswire Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) ENP Newswire - 30 June 2014
Release date- 18062014 - San Carlos, CA - Check Point Software Technologies (Nasdaq: CHKP), the worldwide leader in securing the Internet, has today announced the findings of a survey showing that a combination of progressively more sophisticated malware and lack of intelligence about new security threats are key reasons for the growing number of successful malware attacks.

The gap between attack sophistication and available threat intelligence meant 31% of respondents said their organisation had suffered up to 20 successful attacks in the past 12 months - while 34% were unable to say exactly how many they had fallen victim to.

According to the survey of 140 UK IT and infosecurity professionals, the growing number of successful malware attacks is having a damaging impact upon business, in terms of both time spent and costs incurred when restoring and fixing systems after an attack. 28% of respondents stated that, on average, it took up to 10 days of IT staff time to remediate issues caused by a single attack. 33% said a malware attack cost on average between GBP10,000 and GBP50,000 to remediate.

These most recent findings further emphasise the growing challenge businesses face in tackling attacks from new, unknown malware, which were highlighted in Check Point's 2014 Security Report published in May this year. The report, based on analysis of monitored security events from over 10,000 organisations worldwide across a range of industry sectors, found that 33% of organisations had downloaded infected files with unknown malware between June and December 2013.

Keith Bird, UK managing director for Check Point said: 'It is becoming evident that there's a widening gap between the developing sophistication of malware, and intelligence available on new threats to help block attacks. To cut the risks of exposure to external attacks, and to stop threats spreading, companies should enforce multiple threat prevention layers, including threat emulation or 'sandboxing,' and also look to use a range of real-time threat intelligence feeds to update their security solutions and help automatically prevent attacks.

Only by adopting this kind of holistic approach will organisations start to see a decline in successful malware attacks and the resultant costs, in terms of time and money, in remedying the issues that these create.'
Survey respondents highlighted a number of factors contributing to malware attacks being more successful, including: more zero-day exploits that weren't detected by anti-virus solutions (15%); a lack of useful intelligence about new threats (14%); and smarter social engineering tactics by malware authors that tricked users (12%).

Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (www.checkpoint.com), the worldwide leader in securing the Internet, provides customers with uncompromised protection against all types of threats, reduces security complexity and lowers total cost of ownership. Check Point first pioneered the industry with FireWall-1 and its patented stateful inspection technology.

Today, Check Point continues to develop new innovations based on the Software Blade Architecture, providing customers with flexible and simple solutions that can be fully customized to meet the exact security needs of any organization. Check Point is the only vendor to go beyond technology and define security as a business process. Check Point 3D Security uniquely combines policy, people and enforcement for greater protection of information assets and helps organizations implement a blueprint for security that aligns with business needs. Customers include tens of thousands of organizations of all sizes, including all Fortune and Global 100 companies. Check Point's award-winning ZoneAlarm solutions protect millions of consumers from hackers, spyware and identity theft.